The Holy Mass by Adrienne Von Speyr

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Synopsis

This meditation on the Mass by the mystic Von Speyr contains many penetrating insights, particularly about the nature of the Mass as sacrifice—of Christ, of his priest, and of every believer united in and with the entire Church—expressed with a poetic layering of concepts and images that is at once complex and lucid, dense and transparent. The meditation rewards the present-day reader's effort with a fresh and palpable sense that the real truth of the Church's constant re-presentation, re-enactment of Christ's "sacrifice once offered" transcends not only the nearly half-a-century since Von Speyer's meditation, but all time —time which is itself sanctified precisely through the endless repetition of the Sacrament of unity that is the Holy Mass.

von Speyr was a 20th century Swiss convert, mystic, wife, medical doctor and author of some seventy books on spirituality and theology. She entered the Church under the direction of Hans Urs von Balthasar, who was her confessor for twenty-seven years.